this post was submitted on 05 Jan 2026
1528 points (99.4% liked)
Late Stage Capitalism
2591 readers
100 users here now
A place for for news, discussion, memes, and links criticizing capitalism and advancing viewpoints that challenge liberal capitalist ideology. That means any support for any liberal capitalist political party (like the Democrats) is strictly prohibited.
A zero-tolerance policy for bigotry of any kind. Failure to respect this will result in a ban.
RULES:
1 Understand the left starts at anti-capitalism.
2 No Trolling
3 No capitalist apologia, anti-socialism, or liberalism, liberalism is in direct conflict with the left. Support for capitalism or for the parties or ideologies that uphold it are not welcome or tolerated.
4 No imperialism, conservatism, reactionism or Zionism, lessor evil rhetoric. Dismissing 3rd party votes or 'wasted votes on 3rd party' is lessor evil rhetoric.
5 No bigotry, no racism, sexism, antisemitism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, or any type of prejudice.
6 Be civil in comments and no accusations of being a bot, 'paid by Putin,' Tankie, etc. This includes instance shaming.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Do you think that's how surge pricing works on apps like Uber? There's a human watching the market and constantly making adjustments?
Or do you think it's computerized (or nowadays, probably AI)? Which do you think is more likely?
Doesn't matter. You still need some condition to trigger price changes. No grocery is going to change the price of bread based on the wheat futures market, because no consumer cares about wheat futures. Maybe they'd change based on their own inventory, but they can't do that too quickly, or the price will change between the time customer picks up the product and the clerk rings it up.
There's a whole population of people who shop in advance - visit web sites, check the store fliers, whatever - to get the best price. If a shelf price doesn't match their researched price, they're never going to that store again.
Aside from gas stations, grocery stores seem to have the most volatile pricing. They're already making weekly changes on dozens of items, probably based on purchasing algorithms. Maybe that counts as retail "surge" pricing, but it's not the dynamics that people fear when talking about digital price tags.
Just because it's not happening constantly everywhere, doesn't mean that it isn't being tested some places, and isn't coming soon.
It also doesn't mean that it is.
What reality do you live in, because I want to go to there
Germany.